How To Move To Alaska (Purging)

I will be either writing more posts as I go along or I’ll turn into a static page for those interested in the entire process.

But first things first…

Obviously I advise you have money, time and HOUSE in place. But those things I will get to eventually. Start saving money now. Start making lists now. And start looking at houses now.

In the meantime consider even if you have money…do you really want to haul EVERYTHING in your house up here? Can it be replaced? Sure. If not then start making piles. Now is the time to purge, organize and reassess. First instance I had the following piles:

Donate.

Trash.

Sell.

Keep.

Storage (if you chose like we did)

Unsure.

The unsure pile I went back to periodically to decide. And if I couldn’t make an absolute decision on it it, it went to storage. We put things in storage that can’t be replaced, that we could live without temporarily and that we WANTED. But we made heavy choices on wants. Yes things can be replaced up here but it is true you will find a higher (but small) price difference up here.

One of our biggest things to tackle for this move was clothing. We moved up when we knew the weather was going to turn to quite cold quickly. Our tank tops, shorts and flip flops weren’t a necessity but we could use them. If we determined that in 6 months we could still fit into them.

So we had a few piles for the clothing.

Donate.

Keep.

Storage.

Sell.

We decided NOT to sell any of the “good” clothing at a yard/garage sale. The clothes in this pile were in good if not great condition, sat in our closet because we allowed them to & served no purpose to us here nor there. We chose to go with thredUP to clear out space and sell.

It’s fast, painless and EASY. No bargaining. Just put the clean clothes in a big and off they go. thredUp will update you as to status etc of your stuff.

This is merely the first baby step in Moving To Alaska. Purging your items. One it gives you a better idea of what you are taking (to determine shipping, uHaul, or what you might need). Yard/garage sales are perfect for getting rid of the unwanted, giving you that extra cash to put into your moving fund and donating for instance to Goodwill — can be a tax write off and for those like me…a way to think of the many families who could use all the STUFF you’ve kept around because you had room but didn’t NEED.